Lesley Wyborn

The 2025 Ian McHarg Medal is awarded to Lesley Wyborn for achievements in enabling collaboration among international organisations and leadership with regard to global, multidisciplinary data infrastructure in the fields of Earth and space sciences.

Lesley Wyborn has had (and continues to have!) a seminal and sustained impact on the development and implementation of global research data infrastructures across a wide array of Earth and space science disciplines. She has pioneered the development of data standards that have enabled interoperability between geoscience data resources, advanced the harmonisation of data formats, the adoption of open access to research data, and the implementation of the FAIR guiding principles to everything from Big Data to the Long Tail. Through her tireless engagement, she has made fundamental contributions to the creation and growth of a global, inclusive, and collaborative Earth and Space Science Informatics (ESSI) community. Her dedication and herculean effort to bring together research data experts, projects, initiatives, and organisations on a global scale and foster international coordination and collaboration has had a long-lasting impact on the availability and reuse of FAIR, machine-readable, and harmonized data and metadata.

Among the many international informatics projects that she helped get underway, sustain, and bring to successful outcomes, are OneGeochemistry, OneGeology, GeoSciML, Oceans Data Interoperability Platform (ODIP), the Belmont Forum, and the International Generic Sample Number (IGSN). Considering the breadth of her research activities touching nearly every aspect of geoscience data management (e.g., readiness for High-Performance Computing, metadata standards, vocabularies, data versioning, data citation, machine-readability) in a wide range of disciplines, Wyborn’s impact is unparalleled.

Wyborn’s relentless efforts to foster and enable collaboration are also evident in her extensive community leadership in international scientific societies, unions, and other organisations: She has been a member of both the EGU and AGU ESSI Executive Committee. She chaired the McHarg Medal Award Committee 2016–2022, and was a member of AGU’s Diversity and Inclusion Advisory Committee, Data Management Advisory Board, and Fall Meeting Program Committee, where she dramatically improved the quality and visibility of the ESSI program.
With her simultaneously deep and broad knowledge in the Earth, computer, and information sciences, Wyborn has driven and advanced a highly diverse range of research problems, from the development of best practices for small data and physical samples to solutions for architectures in petascale computing, from the rescue of data-at-risk to the creation of virtual research environments, from advancing the implementation of FAIR data practices to promoting diversity and inclusion in the Earth and space sciences (CARE Principles).

Wyborn is well known and respected by the entire informatics community. We are amazed to see her tireless drive to develop international collaboration within different geoscience specialties, as well as between communities and, more broadly, with other scientific disciplines. Her vision of the geosciences is always a step ahead of the community, paving the way for radical changes in FAIR data practices and, more broadly, in HPC and AI tools. She has successfully invested in a considerable number of networks, always striving to create effective links. Her enthusiasm, inspiration, and dedication to finding solutions, as well as her ability to bring together people, communities and disciplines across the globe, is extraordinary. Without her, this field would not be what it is today.